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Poland's Holocaust bill is driven by sense of humiliation, says @RachelDonadio: "a sense that the Holocaust—in which three million Polish Jews were slaughtered on Polish soil—was giving Poland a bad name."

The Dark Consequences of Poland's New Holocaust Law-

The country is stifling open discussion of war crimes—and jeopardizing its own standing on the world stage....

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Spread Of Ebola In Congo A 'Game Changer'

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WHO is deploying about 30 Ebola experts to the outbreak zone and says they will work with locals "to engage with communities on prevention and treatment and the reporting of new cases."

Most Ebola cases are spread through person-to-person transmission, according to the WHO. People can become infected via bodily fluids or secretions — like blood, stool, saliva or **** — if they enter the body through broken skin or a mucous membrane. As a result, health workers and family members of infected people are at higher risk of infection.

But an experimental Ebola vaccine — two years in the making — is providing some hope........

The Israeli Prime Minister phoned Trudeau yesterday to say he wouldn’t co-operate with an international investigation, officials said. Netanyahu did say that Israeli forces would conduct a fact-finding inquiry to determine how a Canadian-Palestinian doctor was wounded by an Israeli sniper. Rejecting the call for a larger probe, Netanyahu blamed Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, and said Israel was defending its territory. Trudeau had called for an independent investigation into Israel’s use of “excessive force” which resulted in 62 deaths and more than 2,700 injuries. Hamas has since acknowledged that 50 of the 62 Palestinians killed were its members.

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Venezuela's Maduro Wins Boycotted Elections Amid Charges Of Fraud

".............Those opposed to Maduro have long maintained that the election is fraudulent, not least because the opposition's most popular leaders — the ones with the best chance of unseating the president — were barred from running.

As NPR's Philip Reeves reports from Caracas, "Throughout the day voting stations appeared almost empty around the capital." Despite that, election officials claim turnout of nearly 50 percent.

"The process undoubtedly lacks legitimacy and as such we do not recognize it," said Falcon, a 56-year-old former state governor......

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Nicolas Maduro has been declared the winner of Sunday’s presidential election, which saw a 46.1 percent turnout, according to Venezuela’s electoral council, after the opposition branded the vote a fraud and called for a boycott.

With 92.6 percent of the vote counted, Maduro has won presidential election with 5,823,728 of the votes, National Electoral Council chief Tibisay Lucena announced. His main adversary, Henri Falcon of the Progressive Advance party, obtained 1,820,552 votes; while the independent candidate Javier Bertucci won 925,042 votes.

“How much have they underestimated our revolutionary people, and how much have they underestimated me,”Maduro told a late-night crowd in front of the presidential palace.“And here we are, victorious.”

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ENEMIES of Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution have lost no time in pouring scorn on President Nicolas Maduro’s re-election.

Despite assurances given to theMorning Star’s Calvin Tucker, one of many international observers present to monitor proceedings, that opposition leader Henri Falcon would respect the result just a day before the vote took place, the polls had hardly closed before Falcon cried foul and demanded a rerun.

The BBC was soon dutifully reporting that the victory had come amid “claims of vote-rigging,” an assertion made by liberal propagandists on the assumption that few viewers will look into how plausible those claims are.

In fact Venezuela’s voting system makes fraud impossible: voters are identified by fingerprint and vote on an electronic touch-screen device that then prints a ballot which the voter checks before casting. There are two records of every vote and any discrepancy would quickly become obvious. This is the voting process US president Jimmy Carter described as “the best in the world.”

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On May 20, 1921, around 30,000 tea labourers left their workplace in Sylhet region and started walking towards Chandpur Meghna Ghat. When they reached there, the then Assamese police opened fire on the protesters. Many of the workers were killed, and their bodies were thrown into the river. The rest fled.
Marking the incident, Tea Workers Day will be observed tomorrow like every year.

Tea workers: Poorest of the poor

Daily wages Tk 85, three times less than a farm worker's

Almost a century ago, tea workers in Sylhet left their gardens and started a journey back to the lands of their origin -- Bihar, Odisha and Assam. It was a protest march they called “Mulluke Cholo” (Let's go back home). The protest was against the inhumane working conditions and torture at the hands of British owners.

This incident took place on May 20, 1921.

Since then, in the last 97 years, little change has come into the lives of tea workers. Today they could barely live by the wage they earn, many of them go to bed half-fed, and their families cram into small quarters lacking any sanitation facilities.

All their sufferings are related to their meagre income -- Tk 85 a day (barely equivalent to $1). It is more than three times less than the average farm worker earns daily -- Tk 300.

The tea workers in the country have long been demanding a raise to make their income on par with labourers of other sectors, but their call almost always went unheard.

Five years back, their daily wage stood at Tk 55 while they demanded Tk 120 at the time. This year, they want their income to be fixed at Tk 300.

Mohon Bauri, 43, a tea worker of Khadimnagor tea garden in Sylhet sadar upazila, said, “Our living standard has not improved because we get very low wages.”

“We start working in the tea garden from childhood but we get a meagre Tk 2,550 every month,” said Koloti Robidas, 46, of a Sreemangal garden in Moulvibazar.

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Xi’s Race Against a Population Timebomb

President Xi Jinping’s biggest obstacle to completing China's rise to global wealth and power may not be the U.S. under Donald Trump, but a greying population.

That’s why Xi's Communist Party may soon bring an historic end to its roughly four-decade-old policy of limiting the number of children each family can have. The population-control measures — involving steep fines, forced abortions and sterilizations — could be repealed as soon as this year,Bloomberg News exclusively reports.

The demographic experiment, which once limited families to just one child, has left China with 30 million more men than women andan aging problemsimilar to those of much more developed economies. By 2030 — when Xi hopes to be completing China’smodernization drive— about one-quarter of the population will be 60 or older.

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A U.S. government employee in China reported abnormal sensations of sound and pressure ahead of being diagnosed with a mild brain injury, in a case reminiscent of diplomats who fell ill in Cuba last year.

“The medical indications are very similar and entirely consistent with the medical indications that have taken place to Americans working in Cuba,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. “We are working to figure out what took place both in Havana and now in China as well.”

The employeeexperiencedthe symptoms from late 2017 through April 2018 while on assignment in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, where a U.S. consulate is located, according to Jinnie Lee, a spokeswoman at the U.S. embassy in Beijing. After being sent to the U.S., a clinical evaluation determined the employee had a “mild traumatic brain injury,” she said.

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Japan Ministry Releases Scandal Papers It Said Were Destroyed

Japan’s Finance Ministry released records relating to a sale of public land that hassparked allegationsof cronyism and undermined support for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. A ministry official told parliament last year they’d been destroyed.

About 4,000 pages of documents relating to the scandal were submitted to a meeting of the directors of the lower house budget committee, according to Seiji Osaka, a director and lawmaker with the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan. The documents were retrieved from the Osaka District Court.

The papers are the latest revelation in a drip-feed of scandals that hasdamaged supportfor the long-serving premier, as he faces an election for leadership of his ruling Liberal Democratic Party in September. A change at the top could cast doubt on the future of the central bank’s unprecedented monetary easing policy and the prospects for a sales-tax rise next year.

Teachersthroughout the province began a two-day strike on Tuesday that will go national on Wednesday aseducationunions rally to demand a24 percent raiseand a trigger clause in theircontractthat increases salaries to match inflation.

The Buenos Aires government has offered syndicate leaders a 10-15 percent increase, but that offer has been rejected on the grounds it isn't enough to "turn the lights on."

China scolds U.S. for withdrawing invite to naval drills

BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s Defence Ministry expressed regret on Thursday after the United States withdrew an invitation to China to attend a major U.S.-hosted naval drill, saying that closing the door does not promote mutual trust and cooperation.

The Rim of the Pacific exercise, known as RIMPAC and previously attended by China, is billed as the world’s largest international maritime exercise and held every two years in Hawaii in June and July.

RIMPAC enabled the armed forces of the world’s two largest economies to directly engage with each other. It was viewed by both countries as a way to ease tensions and reduce the risk of miscalculation should they meet under less friendly circumstances.

China scolds U.S. for withdrawing invite to naval drills

BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s Defence Ministry expressed regret on Thursday after the United States withdrew an invitation to China to attend a major U.S.-hosted naval drill, saying that closing the door does not promote mutual trust and cooperation.

The Rim of the Pacific exercise, known as RIMPAC and previously attended by China, is billed as the world’s largest international maritime exercise and held every two years in Hawaii in June and July.

RIMPAC enabled the armed forces of the world’s two largest economies to directly engage with each other. It was viewed by both countries as a way to ease tensions and reduce the risk of miscalculation should they meet under less friendly circumstances.

Be great for China in gathering intelligence. Our strengths and weaknesses by putting our navy to a simulated test.

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Brazil Truckers Strike for Fourth Day

Brazil’s truckers have pledged to continue a four-day strike that has wreaked havoc on the economy, saying a temporary cut in diesel fuel prices doesn’t meet their demands.

From a lack ofbunsat McDonald’s to restrictions on airline traffic, shortages of goods and services spread throughout the country on Thursday. Sugar mills halted operations due to the lack of diesel, following a handful of car assembly plants that shut down the day before because they ran out of parts and couldn’t get vehicles to dealers.

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...... A "no" vote would preserve the 1983 amendment that recognizes the "right to life of the unborn," effectively equating the life of a fetus with the life of a mother. A "yes" vote, meanwhile, would ease the way for Irish lawmakers to pass legislation allowing abortions in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and in cases that could endanger the mother's life. .....

"It's a vote as to whether we trust the women of Ireland to make decisions about their own lives for themselves.

Nevertheless, given the extent to which he has thrown his weight behind "yes," many observers regard this vote as a referendum partly on the popularity of his still-young tenure as premier. It's also a test of the apparent leftward shift of the electorate recently represented by Varadkar himself, the first openly gay prime minister in a once-deeply conservative country.....

Jose Maria Sison is the founder and leader of the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Philippine President Rodrigo Dutertesaid he had invitedJose Maria Sison, a self-exiledCommunistrebel leader, back to the country for “make or break” peace talks. The head of state affirmed that, despite attempts to declare Maria Sison a terrorist, he would be allowed to leave the country after the negotiations.

“He has agreed, and I gave him a window of two months, very small,” Duterte said, adding that “I will see to it and will personally escort him to the airport.”

He vowed to bring Maria Sison to the airport regardless of the outcome of the negotiations so that he may return to the Netherlands.